Posted
by
Unknown Lamer
on Wednesday January 25, 2012 @12:49PM
from the making-diebold-machines-seem-like-a-good-idea dept.

gManZboy writes "If a ballot was lost in the cloud, would anyone know? Several states are using an online balloting website based on Microsoft's Azure cloud-computing platform to allow U.S. voters living overseas to cast their votes via the Web in 2012 primary elections. In addition to a now complete Florida primary, Virginia and California will use the system for their primaries, and Washington state will use it for its caucus. To ensure the ballots are from legitimate voters, people use unique identifying information to access their ballots online, according to Microsoft. Once received, the signature on the ballot is matched with registration records to further verify identity."

Because 1). People treat voting counting as a basic data collection and management problem, rather than something with particular significance.

2). Because of 1) they go shopping for a commodity "IT Solution". Unfortunately, humans (on average) are barely better than insentient objects at choosing a "Solution" that isn't a raging clusterfuck(even in those situations where there is such a solution).

3). Because of 2), somebody is left with an onrushing deadline and a pile of shit, and has to make everything appear to go more or less smoothly on time, working with whatever they have.

There certainly is reason to be substantially more suspicious of electoral matters, given what's at stake; but organizations of all types routinely build horribly maladjusted systems for all sorts of purposes, so it isn't a huge surprise...

Reason 0 to add to your list is embodied in the first sentence of the posted summary:

Several states are using an online balloting website based on Microsoft's Azure cloud-computing platform to allow U.S. voters living overseas to cast their votes via the Web in 2012 primary elections.

Other than the deployed military or remotely stationed government employees, anyone choosing to live overseas has pretty much given up their right to vote and entrusted the running of the country to their fellow countrymen if you ask me. (Yes, I realize you didn't ask me).

The idea that every person, where ever they are, regardless of how inconvenient or expensive they have made it for themselves to vote must be given the op

Well, your government believes it has the right to exercise its authority anywhere on the planet, and has been caught writing laws for other countries (when it doesn't outright invade them) so in all fairness, the entire planet should get to vote in US elections.

Slight tongue in cheek aside - these people [US citizens living overseas] are still under the jurisdiction of your government, and still pay taxes (my understanding is for US citizens, federal taxes are based on worldwide income?) so why shouldn't t

> Well, your government believes it has the right to exercise its> authority anywhere on the planet, and has been caught writing laws> for other countries (when it doesn't outright invade them) so in all> fairness, the entire planet should get to vote in US elections.

I am one of these US citizens living abroad, and I very much appreciate that the STATE governments of the US enable me to continue to vote. As a citizen, I certainly have that right. And as a US citizen, I have a continuing obligation to pay taxes on my worldwide income to the US government AND to the government where I live, and I do so gladly.

This new technology use will likely make the process go more smoothly, and lessen the likelihood tha

The USA is the only country, IIRC, that taxes its citizens in such a way.

Wrong.Canada, UK, Germany and most of the EU tax foreign income. There are exemptions for tax paid in foreign countries.In the US there is an $87,000 exemption off the top, and an exemption for taxes paid to foreign government.http://www.groco.com/readingroom/intl_foreign_income.aspx [groco.com]

While the military has the ability to schlep ballots, it is the USPS job to do so, not the military.

The USA IS the only country which taxes citizens that way. Many (most?) countries do tax the worldwide income of their citizens, but only while those citizens are tax residents of their home country. Most countries stop taxing citizens when they move away from the home country for a period of time. The US is the only country which never gives up. A US citizen is taxed on worldwide income no matter where they live and how long they have lived there.

In many countries the voters are unhappy when the vote counting is done behind closed doors- they know something fishy is going on (whether they can do anything about it is another matter).

One important requirement for a voting system is convincing enough of the losers that they've lost.So even if you have an electronic voting system that actually works properly[1], you need to convince the voters that it works properly.

Of course if most of the voters don't care that much then it doesn't matter.

Great! In Amerika we've gone the other way so that issue is moot.You see, we've developed a system where we take two identical candidates and blow them up until every possible microscopic difference is visible and then we convince voters that those differences matter. Then, after the election, we shrink them back down and show everyone how similar they really are. Everyone from the losing 'side' gets to blame the winning 'side' for everything bad until the next 'election'. It's great fun but not much of a way to run a country.

There are often more than two candidates. But if two candidates combined get more than 98% of the votes, it just sends a message that those two combined are satisfying most of the voters who actually bother to vote, as much as possible, given the differences in what the voters want, and their priorities.If the voters wish to send a different message, they should vote differently. Even if the other candidates do not win, if a 3rd candidate gets 30% of the votes, the "popular 2" candidates may consider chang

If you think the Florida one was tampered with what makes you think they wouldn't be able to tamper with it if it was electronic (especially given the sorts of electronic voting systems they use or are proposing)?At least with the Florida one people suspect something is fishy. With the usual "black box" voting, good luck detecting anything unless the perps are idiots (and do a 99% or even 101% win) or a verifiable system is used like the one I linked to.

Why do electoral commissions, or the local alternative, keep attempting to bring in voting systems that have been proven to be vulnerable? (Conspiracy theories aside).

Because they decided it was a good idea to replace one expensive vulnerable system with one slightly less expensive vulnerable system? I imagine it's time for a scorecard for e-voting (like the one for "fixing" spam) that starts with "It looks like you are proposing a replacement to the paper ballot. Your idea is bad for the following reasons..."

I imagine a similar fear must have sank in to the board members of the first pair of banks that decided to start electronically trading transactions with each oth

In most places in Canada at least, we need Photo ID to match the voters' list, and the postcard that the election team sends out that has our name, address, and voting location. Of course every ballot I've cast has been with a paper and pencil and the results are tabulated fairly quickly.

The biggest issues I've seen with the US federal ballots are that local races are including on the same one that you're using to vote for your Rep, Senator and President. Separating these out would make things so much easi

The reason why it's considered racist is that the only reason there's any interest in using such a card is to prevent the poor and those of color from participating.

But, more importantly, it's not a problem. The GOP continually makes a big deal out of voter fraud, but the reality is that the voter fraud that exists is rare. Only a handful of people are prosecuted in any given year.

The reality here is that you have to balance the security of votes cast with the right of people to vote. Now in the future if v

but the reality is that the voter fraud that exists is rare. Only a handful of people are prosecuted in any given year.

Your second statement is not proof that voter fraud is rare. It merely supports that only a handful of people are prosecuted.

Speeding tickets are rare in comparison to the number of drivers speeding. Does that mean they were not actually speeding? Or does it show that there are not enough resources to catch each violation.

Your statement could be true because fraud is rare. It could also be that prosecutors do not want to prosecute or are dissuaded from prosecuting more instances. It could be that the system is so weak producing evidence of the fraud is difficult.

The burden of proof is on the people who are claiming that there's massive voter fraud. It isn't up to me to prove that it isn't common. And ultimately the bar is set fairly high because people do have a legal right to vote after they turn 18 unless they have had their rights taken away.

You don't have to disagree, it appears though that you wanted to. I think though that you are asking for something to be proven which wholly impractical to prove without massive changes to the system. To illustrate, can you give a somewhat complete description of what proof would be required for you ( a presumed nonbeliever in the legitimacy and incorruptibility of the system) to be convinced?

No, the burden of proof is on the people claiming the positive result. You can never prove that there is no corruption, at best you can fail to find any. OTOH, if there really is a serious issue with voter fraud then it should be trivial to find.

You have to balance the rights of the people to vote with the need to enforce the rules. In the absence of any evidence that voter fraud is a problem there needs to be justification for changes to be made.

Actually, the bigger problem is with disenfranchising voters, and is (mostly) done by the Rethuglicans

From actively discouraging registered voters by only allowing college students to vote in their home town, threatening to check voters for anything from immigration status (how could they vote w/o being citizens?) to outstanding warrants

Reasoning: Because, at the maximum ever recorded in a modern election, about 100 people or about.005% of voters in an election [electionin...ywatch.com] are convicted of casting fraudulent ballots, we should keep about 11% [brennancenter.org] of people who are entitled to cast a vote from making one.

And we aren't even getting into why we always hold our elections on work days...

My, how times have changed. I remember when suggesting a compulsory national ID card would have sent conservatives running for their firearms.

Alas, I'm not a conservative.

Nor are we talking about a national ID card. Driver's Licenses, which qualify in every State considering the notion, aren't national. And even if you don't need a driver's license, the DMV will issue you a picture ID in every State I've ever lived in.

Plus there's the University ID, which counts. Military ID. Lots of ways to come up w

Those states that have been sued for requiring a photo ID typically charge for that ID or documents that are required to get said ID (birth certificates.) If you are being charged for something so you can vote then it is a poll tax. Poll taxes are not racist per say, but they are meant to keep the impoverished, poor, those on a fixed income and those who have difficulty in getting out from voting.

Sorry, but you are simply wrong about that.

Photo ID has been consistently fought to the death by the Democrat party EVEN when there was no fees, EVEN when outreach programs and exceptions were made for elderly or infirm.

The democrats will simply not allow photo ID because their organized vans that shuffle voters from polling place to polling place would be ineffective. In those jurisdictions that vote by mail this practice has effectively been shut down. Its about the only good thing that vote by mail has

Indiana doesn't have a history of slavery and voter suppression that I'm aware of. There's a reason why South Carolina and those other Southern states are under closer scrutiny.

Around here we were segregated until the mid '70s as far as the schools go, but opted to voluntarily desegregate and as such we have more freedom than places like MO that had to be forced to desegregate.

As I read the TFA, this is NOT an instance of a new online voting system. Apparently is only a new mechanism for providing ballots to overseas voters. The ballot form will be online, and has to be downloaded, marked, and returned in the mail. The ballot has to be signed, and the voting authorities will check signatures against registration lists. Mainly, this is an attempt to eliminate the uncertainty of mail delivery times on one side of the transaction.

"The system allows voters registered to vote in primaries who live overseas to have access to ballots 45 days before the election. From that time until the election, they can cast their ballot electronically, or print out the ballot and mail it or fax it, depending on the state's election rules. "

(emphasis mine)

The first article says:

"While traditional absentee ballots rely on the postal system, LiveBallot gives voters immediate access to a ballot that they can mark online or on paper and return via mail or fax, depending on state election laws."

(emphasis mine)

The first article is more ambiguous, but combined with the second, it seems that at least some states are allowing an entirely-online vote.

The first article (from Microsoft) says: "While traditional absentee ballots rely on the postal system, LiveBallot gives voters immediate access to a ballot that they can mark online or on paper and return via mail or fax, depending on state election laws."

The second article (from InformationWeek) says: "The system allows voters registered to vote in primaries who live overseas to have access to ballots 45 days before the election. From that time until the election, they can cast their ballot electroni

I'm sorry, I was wrong. I skimmed the articles and missed important details.

From the Microsoft PR (to further support your hypothesis):

Democracy Live deploys LiveBallot in partnership with Microsoft, which ensures that the data required to deliver a voter-specific ballot is available 24/7 and is transferred securely, no matter where in the world voters access their ballot. By securely delivering overseas absentee ballots electronically, jurisdictions can cut the transit time of a ballot in half, allowing overseas voters ample time to research and select candidates and return their ballots in time to ensure they are counted.

That's precisely my problem for the next year. I don't believe that the Chinese authorities or the US customs officers are going to be opening my ballots, but they could and even if they don't the ballots could be lost in the mail. I'd rate the risk of the ballot being lost as much more significant than government tampering.

There's also the issue of post mark. It's going to be a minimum of 6 weeks between when they mail me my ballot and when they receive the completed ballot and that's going to make it quit

Not to be too rough or anything, but if you don't like the burden of living abroad, then, don't live abroad. I am also not too kind because I don't imagine you'll be living in China to help improve the industrial base of the US. I know, not your job, but, every little bit counts. You probably don't agree, which makes it not too relevant whether you vote or not...

The thing is that as long as I'm a US citizen I have the right to vote. And the government is obliged to provide a reasonable method of doing so. As technology improves the options improve. At this point there's no reason why it needs to be a PITA at all.

That being said, I'm not helping their industrial base. I'm teaching them English in a rural area. The connection between those students and our competition is about as indirect as you can get. Ultimately without the ability to speak English they're cut off

I agree with you regarding access to voting and it not needing to be a PITA.

I disagree that them learning English is as far from our competition as we can get. Right now, I can't compete for telemarketing jobs in China, or copy editor, or news writer in Mandarin mainly because of the language barrier. Remove that and suddenly several billion Chinese are afraid for their editorial type jobs.

I wasn't advocating a moral filter, just pointing out that if you argue that one person helping Chinese be more compe

Precisely my problem too. The first thing to decide is which Vulnerability bothers me the most. The first thing to realize is that this is China; as such, privacy is not a real concept and is definitely not thought of in a positive sense.

My choices are to mail my ballot, understanding that it is not possible to mail a sealed envelope. The postal people will seal the envelop after they have examined it and its contents. The other option is to fax the ballot. If it is faxed, it must be faxed from the police s

Peasants, do not revolt. You can select from one 1%er corporate purchased candidate or the other 1%er corporate purchased candidate. They do have slightly different marketing messages/lies and you get to select which identical candidate hired the better PR agency and/or you get to select which lies you prefer to hear.

Peasants, do not revolt. You can select from one 1%er corporate purchased candidate or the other 1%er corporate purchased candidate. They do have slightly different marketing messages/lies and you get to select which identical candidate hired the better PR agency and/or you get to select which lies you prefer to hear.

You can vote for [] Bashar al-Assad [] Tank come to your door and blow you up

This is the best argument I've heard lately that demonstrates the reason that *localized* and *representative* government is still the best idea today.(I realize you weren't making that point).

Lately you hear a lot of people theorizing that we no longer need representative democracy, that we can all just vote on our laws via the internet.You also hear we no longer need localized gov't: let's just federalize the majority-opinion.

But the internet is a difficult thing to make perfectly honest.Localized and rep

representative government is best, seriously? Representative government was created primarily as a means of buffering the rich from the majority opinion (our views tend to diverge unless we're drunk on tea). It still does that. Representatives (the rich then, as the rich now) can listen to what their constituents (the majority) wants, and "balance" it with what the rich want, by and large, the rich get what they want. The only way to get laws that are not bought and paid for by corporate elites is to re

Letting aside the problems about electronic ballots themselves, voting is as good a case for cloud computing as it can be. "Only a secure website", you say? well, what do you want it for the four years between ballots?

As somebody that's a week out from moving overseas, I can assure you that it's not quite that simple. It typically takes up to 3 weeks for mail to get between here and there and for a $30 fee I can cut that down to a week. During which time the mail may or may not get through.

Voting online is something that does have risks, but you have to keep in mind that the number of votes that are likely to be eligible are going to be fairly small and that particularly in WA state it isn't easy to tell what the vote is

It's not just the $10 it's having the time to do it and access to the other documentation. Plus, unless you drive a car that's $10 that you wouldn't otherwise need to spend.

It's worth noting that the only reason why the GOP cares about it at all is because minorities are more likely to not have photo identification than other groups are. Around here we allow several other forms of identification and despite GOP whining they haven't been able to produce any evidence of voter fraud significant enough to justi

If you read the article, its not the actual VOTING that is being done online in most cases, it is having access to an absentee ballot. Oregon does its entire election by mail. It is actually a lot more secure than using polling places. Each ballot is returned in an envelope signed by the voter. The ballot itself is inside a second privacy envelope. Once the signature on the outside envelope is compared to the voter registration card, the privacy envelope is pulled out and put in a pile to be counted so ther

In addition to a now complete Florida cloud, Virginia and California will use the cloud for their cloud, and Washington cloud will use it for its cloud. To ensure the clouds are from legitimate clouds, clouds use unique clouding clouds to access their clouds online, according to Microsoft. Once clouded, the cloud on the cloud is clouded with cloud cloud to cloud cloud cloud.